That's a huge increase in migrants - over 13% of the population of England and Wales were not born there - and the jump in the last 10 years is obvious

This isn't about race (although white British people are down to 80%), but immigration, these are people who are currently here who were not born here (excluding the Irish), not second or third generation immigrants of a different colour, a figure which is going to rise naturally - these are people who are coming here - effectively it means a hell of a lot of people are being let in at a very fast rate

You can see the figure is pretty static from 1970 to 1990 - rising from about 6% to 7.5% in thirty years, this indicates a fairly steady trickle of immigration, of course if you came here in 1970 you'd probably still be alive in 1990 and you'll still be counted

But In the last twenty years it has effectively doubled, and it's pretty safe to assume that the Labour years are pretty clearly the main factor even in the 90s

Maybe, as the BBC's Home Affairs correspondent Dominic Casciani (isn't that Mark Easton's job?) says it's 'globalisation', which may to some extent be true, but it's also evidence of a lax border control policy or deliberate opening of the floodgates - they've let in what now amounts to 5% of the population in the past ten years, or over quarter of a million people per year

Make of it what you will, it just recalls to mind those 'crazy' stories that Labour deliberately brought in migrants to increase their vote

But anyway, I just found that a pretty remarkable graph - globalisation..maybe, but if that trend continues in ten years we could be looking at every fifth person not being born here - is that a good idea for any (major) country?

My main point was actually supposed to be about this piece by Mark Easton - apparently

there has been a sudden and unexplained rise in the fertility rate over the past few years. Although the increase in the number of women of childbearing age is
mainly due to migration over the past decade, they still represent only a
small proportion of the total and cannot explain the significant rise
in total fertility rate.

Absolutely massive spike after 2001 - coinciding with a massive spike in immigration

Coincidence? Apparently so

Like many people I suspect, my immediate thought was that higher
fertility rates might be a consequence of higher immigrations levels.
Apparently not.

He's thought the obvious, so is not being politically correct, do go on...

Immigration has had an impact on the birth rate (the number of babies):
foreign mothers now account for a quarter of all births.

Let's establish this as a fact, it's a fairly well known figure - 25% of all births are to foreign born mothers, and yet didn't I just put up a graph that showed foreign born people are about 13% and only half of that were in the past decade?

Immigration has not had any significant impact on the fertility rate
(babies per mother): the big increase in immigration between 2001 and
2008 was from Eastern Europe, notably Poland, but women from the
accession countries do not generally have more babies than British-born
mothers. In fact, the fertility rate in Poland is significantly lower
than the UK - 1.2 in 2003 and now just under 1.4.

In Poland? This is where I started to smell the BS - the rate in Poland, not where they are, but where they've left - this is a massive assumption that it's predominantly a cultural issue, as with Asian and African immigrants having larger families

Surely you should be checking the rate of Polish immigrants who are here, surely at least check?? (and I'm completely ignoring that Eastern Europe is about half the immigration figures, the rest are stereotypical 'large family' places like India and Pakistan which isn't mentioned anywhere)

New figures show that the number of immigrants having babies has doubled since
2001, largely driven by an influx of Polish, Pakistani and Indian mothers.

Hang on, Polish? But the Polish hate babies more than we do, just look at Poland!!

This has now increased by at least eleven-fold to 23,000 last year, making
Poland the top nationality for creating second-generation immigrants to the
UK.
Women from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Somalia, Germany, South
Africa, Lithuania and China have the next highest number of babies.

Even though India provides the highest number of immigrants, the Poles are breeding more? Odd

The proportion of foreign-born women of child-bearing age living in the UK has
increased from 14 per cent to 18 per cent since 2007, giving them a
substantial impact on the overall number of births.

So 18% of the fertile are making 25% of the babies

So that means the remaining 82% 'natives' are only making 75% of the babies - what does that tell you about the fertility rate? (that's the maths for dummies)

Birth to UK mothers have also risen, with British-born women have an average
of 1.89 children.
However, they are not keeping pace with the births of children to foreign
women in the UK, who are giving birth to an average of 2.28 children.

So it has indeed risen, but not as much as was being quoted - higher fertility rates in immigrants accounts for about 25% of the increase in fertility

So Mark is technically right, immigration does not entirely account for the increase in births per woman, the group isn't large enough to have that much of an impact but there is clear evidence available that shows foreign-born women are having significantly more babies and that has put some upward pressure on the figure

Why didn't he include this data? It would only make his case stronger - while it accounts for some, it doesn't account for all of it - then you go on and blame Tony Blair for most of it, he's confirmed people's anecdotal evidence and preconceptions and he's found an interesting statistical investigation

Instead the widely-held belief is dismissed and he relies on non-relevant data from another country, which enrages people who either want their views confirmed or who hate flimsy use of figures, forcing them to go and find readily available data and allow them to call him and the BBC biased

If anything I find it lazy, he looks like he's being fed data from a third party who may have an agenda and gone 'this is interesting', the use of Poland's native fertility rate is obviously weak and should at least have been verified as being remotely relevant to the UK's Polish community, instead he just accepts the premise that more Eastern European immigration would in fact lower fertility rates, meaning the British are breeding even more - a simple check of the real figures tells you that's complete nonsense

There's not a figure in sight to back up these claims in the article, barring the use of the actual fertility rates the analysis is cooked up on assumptions and irrelevant facts, which is something you would normally be accusing the 'it's the immigrants!' brigade of doing

What winds me up even more is they are mostly right, Labour welfare policies did pay people to breed - they just seem to have dismissed a portion of the story for the sake of political correctness or being pro-immigration - it could've been interesting, instead, it's not only omitted that a key feature of this trend even exists, but denied it even happened

10 December 2012

Just a quick note on this daft business of evil Australian DJs (it's late, excuse the poor flow)

We expat Poms have a rather unique insight into this strange case of a bog-standard prank call gone very wrong

You see, we get to know all about Australia's commercial radio stations, and the rank hypocrisy of the British press

The Mail has 'discovered' Kyle Sandilands (who is a controversial DJ who works for the same station) because of course, the two are linked - dirty Aussies and their crass ways

Not that the left wing Fairfax press here haven't tried to get in digs at Alan Jones, but I digress

The prank was pretty tame, there were no abused children involved, nothing offensive was said, it was a standard Sydney morning radio show wind-up call, but shame on the Ozzies for shaming a nurse into so much anguish that she'd kill herself

But hang on, some Australians may have committed the crime originally but somehow I doubt the nurse would have been too upset by the very concept of being tricked, and was unlikely to be listening to 2day FM or picking up a Sydney daily

No, it was the rampant and vile British press, who are so obsessed with a pair of 30 year olds who managed to have sex that they camped outside her place of work, filled acres of newsprint and got the rather pedestrian prank-call global coverage

This is where my British instincts come in, because you just know the tabloids were having a field day - criticising the hospital, the staff, Australia...wondering if Diana is still alive...

and then of course she was found dead, and it's party time, with lashings of hypocrisy as the same press who flooded the world with such a moronic story turn it into a global epic as they point the finger at a pair of hapless DJs

I'm not sure the two DJs are the ones who have 'blood on their hands', if there is some sort of charge out of the inquest then surely the fault should lay on the ones who applied the pressure so relentlessly and drove a possibly fragile person to such extremes - and they wonder why we got Leveson (I disagree with limits on the press, but it's clear why Leveson happened)

If this had been some politician found with a rent-boy, who was then hounded for a week and found dead, would it be the politician's fault...?

26 September 2012

It's a comparison of global salaries - all well and good, and apparently the UK average salary is one of the world's highest, basically the same as the yanks in parity terms

Only, I'm perplexed, Americans I know generally feel they earn less when in the UK - and I know from experience our average salary of £24k is pretty dire

If you can buy say, a can of coke for $1 in the US, and your salary is 44k US, then it should be about 60p here, yet invariably they spend a dollar like we spend a pound (completely hypothetical coke price)

That makes Britain more expensive, not cheaper (or near equal) - a view backed up by the OECD figures, which state a $100 basket of goods will cost you $132 in the UK

So you earn £1996 a month, which buys you $3239 currency, but that's worth $2453 in parity terms

This seems reasonable - I worked at that pay level, and it won't buy you a house very quickly

Meanwhile Australia ranks quite low down the scale, at a meagre 2600 - so what they're saying is £2000 is worth 15% more than AU$5,500

I'm calling BS on this - having worked in both countries, I know the pay is much better in Oz, and I earnt slightly less than average, but it went a lot further

The Australian dollar is of course, worth less - but the OECD figures put it at costing $157 for $100 - even if I exclude the current exchange rate which is above parity, the average Aussie wage is $3500, including exchange rate it's more like $3600

This puts the Ozzies very far in front - but incidentally this chart also disagrees with the official stats of the US government, which say a yank's median income is $45k - obviously parity doesn't come into it in the US so it's a pretty easy calculation - why this chart has taken $400 off the average I don't know

So I call BS on this whole thing - the British average wage is fifth in the world, ahead of all major European nations? While the Aussies, who can buy more US than their own currency, apparently fork out more than double what the yanks do? If you compare the UK and Australia, what they're saying is the pound is worth more than three Aussie dollars, while it may be undervalued at current rates, it's never 3 to 1

Me:

That's Proper Liberalism

About me

Tarquin is a lazy, good-for-nothing, would-be historian who gets easily distracted by idiocy, hypocrisy (particularly of politicians) and football.

The name Tarquin comes from a couple of late Roman kings, and also from a Monty Python sketch, and possibly from some hippies I annoyed several years ago. Peter Hitchens has a problem with my name for some reason, the only reasoning for this seems to be that he thinks it's not a real name...which I'm pretty sure it is, although I'm open to being proven wrong.

Favourite hobbies include: eating, reading, shouting at the TV, watching football and pontificating.